Dramatic Speeches: Soliloquies, Monologues & Rhetoric

• Dramatic speeches are a special form of dialogue used by playwrights that serve specific functions and add layers of meaning.

Soliloquies

• Soliloquies are lengthy speeches where a character, alone on stage, expresses their true thoughts or feelings.

Aside

• An aside is a brief remark, often addressed to the audience but not to other characters.

Monologues

• Monologues are lengthy speeches by one character delivered to other characters who are on stage.

Motif

• A motif is a recurring pattern of imagery, symbols, and language.

Rhetoric

• Rhetoric refers to language devices, especially the art of speaking or writing effectively.

Meter

• The meter of a poem is its rhythmical pattern, determined by the number and arrangements of stressed syllables, or beats, in each line.

Mood

• Mood is the feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage, often suggested by descriptive details, such as lighthearted, frightening, or despairing.

Blank Verse

• Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.

Iamb

• An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Scenes

• Scenes are separate, shorter sections of actions.

Plot

• The plot is the sequence of events in a literary work.

Subplot

• A subplot is a minor story that complicates the main plot.

Dramatic Readings

• Dramatic readings involve an oral interpretation of a text. Two or more people give a performance by reading aloud the text with expression.

Epilogue

• An epilogue gives a sense of closure to a narrative. Typically, a character adds final comments on the conflict and resolution.

Resolution

• The resolution occurs in the final section of a play when all conflicts are resolved and all characters come together.

Rhyming Couplet

• A rhyming couplet is a pair of lines that have the same meter and end words that rhyme.

Full Rhyme

• In a full rhyme, the final stressed vowel sounds of the words are identical, as are any consonant sounds that follow.

Interpretive Essay

• An interpretive essay is a brief expository text in which you explain your analysis and interpretation of a literary work.

Theme

• A theme is a complete idea about life or human nature and must be expressed as a statement.

Characterization

• Characterization is the way in which authors create unique characters by showing what the character does, thinks, and says; how he or she looks; and how other characters perceive him or her.

Zeugma

• Zeugma is the use of one word that applies to two others but in different ways (e.g., "He fished for trout and compliments").

Asyndeton

• Asyndeton is the omission of conjunctions that ordinarily join coordinate words or clauses (e.g., "We will fight, press on, never give up").

Chiasmus

• Chiasmus is parallelism in which the parallel elements repeat in reverse order (e.g., "All for one and one for all!").

Metonymy

• Metonymy uses a word or phrase representing one idea to speak of another with which it is closely associated (e.g., "The pen is mightier than the sword").

Synecdoche

• Synecdoche uses a word or phrase that refers to part of something to speak of the whole, or vice versa (e.g., "All hands on deck" (part for a whole) / "Jacksonville won the series" (whole for a part)).

Connotations

• Connotations are the set of ideas associated with a word in addition to its explicit meaning (emotional associations of words).

Denotations

• Denotations are the dictionary meaning, independent of other associations that the word may have (direct meaning of words).